Page 92 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
Alongside freedom, the Fathers also recognize another di-
vine attribute in the human being: immortality.
Here again, however, they depart from Greek philosophy
in a decisive way. While they accept the notion of the soul’s
immortality, they reinterpret it. For Plato, the soul is eternal,
without beginning. For the Fathers, this is not the case. The
soul has a beginning; it is created.
Yet this does not imply that it must have an end.
Through the introduction of freedom into ontology, the
Fathers break with the classical philosophical principle that
whatever begins must also cease. As St. Gregory the Theolo-
gian affirms, the soul—and likewise the angels—has a begin-
ning, but will not have an end.
Immortality, therefore, is not a necessity of nature, but a gift
of grace.
Nothing in creation is bound by necessity. Even existence
itself is not governed by an inevitable law, but is sustained by
freedom—by the will of God, and by the response of the hu-
man person.
This is why Maximus the Confessor, standing in profound
continuity with Irenaeus of Lyons, places such decisive em-
phasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in the mystery of diviniza-
tion, inseparably linking it to freedom. The human being, he
teaches, was created at the beginning (κατ’ ἀρχὰς) in the im-
age of God, not as a finished reality, but in view of a future
fulfillment—to be born freely (κατὰ προαίρεσιν) in the Spirit,
to receive the “likeness” (τὸ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν), and thus to be-
come what it is called to be: a creature of God by nature, yet a
son of God and even God by grace (πλάσμα μὲν τοῦ Θεοῦ
κατὰ φύσιν, Υἱὸς δὲ Θεοῦ καὶ Θεὸς κατὰ χάριν; Ambigua 42,
PG 91:1345D).
It is of great importance that, in this vision, divinization
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